New Interpretations of Beckett in the Twenty-First Century
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this p... more The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
This chapter examines how Samuel Beckett’s Not I (1972) and Marguerite Duras’s L’Amante anglaise ... more This chapter examines how Samuel Beckett’s Not I (1972) and Marguerite Duras’s L’Amante anglaise (1968) meld elements of the popular postwar genre of testimony literature with the symptoms of fragmented trauma memory, in order to sceptically interrogate the possibility of any ‘successful’ intersubjective communication of pain. Both plays offer a radically reduced sense of how far one can bear witness to traumatic suffering. Resurgent anxieties about France’s role in the Second World War overtook the country’s cultural imagination during the late 1960s and early 1970s, and this chapter reads Beckett’s and Duras’s own distanced proximity to Holocaust suffering against the larger cultural backdrop of increasing Francophone scepticism as to the healing function of postwar testimony. It explores how both plays stage the impossibility of testifying comprehensively to traumatic suffering (whether inflicted or experienced) but also draw on the bodily proximity and specific sensory dimension...
Beckett's plays have attracted a striking range of disability performances, in part because o... more Beckett's plays have attracted a striking range of disability performances, in part because of their insistent attention on embodied existence and the impaired body. Here, I examine four recent disability performances of Beckett's plays, exploring how these productions prompt re-evaluation of the previously undetected indicators of disability in the scripts, including mobility impairment, automatic speech, stuttering, and memory deficiency. Drawing on a series of original interviews with the practitioners in question, I examine the intersection between textual aesthetics and disability ethics in these contemporary productions, emphasising how these performances illuminate crucial corporeal, social, and ontological concerns in Beckett's original scripts, in newly embodied terms.
The shoulder is one of the most mobile and unstable joints in the body. When the function of the ... more The shoulder is one of the most mobile and unstable joints in the body. When the function of the shoulder muscles is altered, and it is without the appropriate neuromotor control, the shoulder can become dysfunctional. It is unknown how previously injured individuals vary in movement patterns or whether their brains change compared to their healthy counterparts. The purpose of this study was to compare neuromotor control of the shoulder between individuals with and without a previous shoulder injury. To achieve this, we used an upper extremity task with motion capture to analyze kinematic performance of the shoulder complex and electroencephalography (EEG) to evaluate neural connectivity of the brain. We hypothesized that individuals with previous injury to the shoulder would have different kinematic patterns as well as a less direct or evasive way of achieving their goal-oriented trajectory. We also hypothesized that participants with previous shoulder injury to have more diffuse patterns of brain connectivity during performance of the task, as compared to healthy participants. Our kinematic results made it evident that healthy and post-injured individuals have different anterior/posterior trunk displacement and hand pathways toward their targets. Our neurological Operational Definitions: Central Nervous System (CNS): Controls most functions of the body and mind. It consists of two parts: the brain and the spinal cord. Compensation: The counterbalancing of any defect of structure or function. A mental process that may be either conscious, or more frequently, an unconscious mechanism by which a person attempts to make up for real or imagined physical or psychological deficiencies. Electroencephalography (EEG): An instrument that measures electrical potentials on the scalp and generates a record of the electrical activity of the brain.
Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers - Water Management, 2021
Phosphorus enrichment in waterbodies can increase the risk of eutrophication and be detrimental t... more Phosphorus enrichment in waterbodies can increase the risk of eutrophication and be detrimental to the health of dependent ecosystems. Phosphorus is a common reason for a waterbody failing to meet the Water Framework Directive ‘good’ status. The Watton Brook (Norfolk, UK) is required to meet good status by 2027; it currently has an overall ‘moderate’ status and a ‘poor’ status for phosphate (as of 2016 classification). Source apportionment modelling predicts treated effluent from water recycling centres is the primary phosphorus source to the Watton Brook, followed by significant agricultural contributions. Considering the agricultural sector input and the cost of upgrading sewage treatment, this study took a stakeholder- and ecosystem services-led approach to explore catchment-based solutions. The feasibility for an integrated catchment approach builds on detailed environmental conceptualisation, phosphorus source apportionment ground-truthing and a review of potential costs and be...
Epistemic injustice" is a fairly new concept in philosophy, which, loosely speaking, describes a ... more Epistemic injustice" is a fairly new concept in philosophy, which, loosely speaking, describes a kind of injustice that occurs at the intersection of structures of the social world and knowledge. While the concept was first put forward in the 1990's, the most significant publication on the topic is Miranda Fricker's book Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing, which was published in 2007. 1 Since then, there has been something of an explosion of literature on the topic of epistemic injustice. 2 However, the concept of epistemic injustice is one that is poorly understood. While Epistemic Injustice offers extensive analysis of some aspects of epistemic injustice, it does a poor job of explaining, overall, what epistemic injustice actually is, limiting most of that explanation to a small section in the introduction of the book. The way that epistemic injustice is presented in this section is highly ambiguous, with key terms being loosely defined (if at all), and the necessary and sufficient conditions of something being an epistemic injustice are left unclear. This remains unresolved in the literature beyond Fricker's account: while there has been some progression in how we think about epistemic injustice beyond what Fricker's work provides us with, there has been a general failure to adequately recognize and address the ambiguities of the Frickerian account of epistemic injustice. In this thesis, I aim to show that, despite superficial impressions to the contrary, the Frickerian account is fundamentally ambiguous and incomplete. Moreover, later attempts to address these issues by subsequent theorists have failed. This project, however, is not in vain. I conclude by proposing a new account of epistemic injustice that overcomes these problems with the Frickerian account, offering a way of understanding epistemic injustice that is both philosophically satisfying and practically useful. 1 Epistemic Injustice has been cited over 2600 times as of 2019 (according to Google Scholar). All other works on epistemic injustice have citation numbers in the hundreds or below (as of 2019, according to Google Scholar). 2 Including, but not limited to, over 300 papers in the "Epistemic Injustice" category on PhilPapers as of 2019; and the publication of The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice (2017).
Although the characters in Waiting for Godot exist in near-constant states of physical pain, Beck... more Although the characters in Waiting for Godot exist in near-constant states of physical pain, Beckett’s play repeatedly emphasises obstacles to any shared or empathetic experience of suffering, both onstage and across the auditorium space. Waiting for Godot does not offer any clear model of compassion as a means of relieving another being’s distress. Rather, by delineating its characters’ indifference to each other’s pain, and by foregrounding the spectator’s own impassivity and even recoil in the face of suffering, the play highlights just how narrow these bounds of human compassion seem to be. This chapter draws on contemporary pain studies to read the unsettling charge of Waiting for Godot’s interrogation of pain’s incomprehensibility, resisting previous determinedly optimistic, humanist-inflected reading of suffering as redemptive in Beckett’s play.
Exchanges: The Interdisciplinary Research Journal, 2016
In early modern England, state beheadings were carefully codified, reserved for the nobility and ... more In early modern England, state beheadings were carefully codified, reserved for the nobility and those convicted of treason. The highest and lowest in society were sentenced to beheading: those who headed the nation and those who threatened the head of the nation. Beheading was both a confirmation and an inscription of power: the publicly-staged state-mandated beheading inscribed the state’s power on the subject’s body, reducing the individual to a legible, mastered sign. The decapitated head was intended to be a stable, monosemantic inscription of state power.Shakespeare, however, often resisted the idea of the decapitated head as a permanent, definitive inscription of state authority. This article will examine decapitations in Shakespeare’s King Henry VI Parts 1, 2 and 3 (1591), exploring how these plays undermine the state’s attempt to inscribe a stable, single meaning on the decapitated head. The plays do this in two ways: firstly, by challenging the state’s monopoly on accordin...
Résumé Le présent article examine la façon dont Eleutheria, la première pièce entière que Beckett... more Résumé Le présent article examine la façon dont Eleutheria, la première pièce entière que Beckett a écrite, refuse un sentiment d’ humanisme simpliste de l’ après-guerre, grâce à sa manipulation de la relation entre scène et spectateurs supposés. Pour Beckett, le passage au théâtre a indiqué un nouvel engagement plus agressif avec le public français, et Eleutheria implique directement ses spectateurs imaginés, les rendant complices dans le spectacle de la souffrance qui se déroule sous leurs yeux. Cet article s’ oppose aux lectures humanistes d’ Eleutheria, et conteste à la fois le lieu commun critique qui la voit comme étant inhabituellement conventionnelle en termes dramaturgiques, en comparaison avec les autres pièces de Beckett. En effet, Beckett se tourne vers le théâtre comme moyen de souligner l’ aptitude humaine à se désengager de la souffrance d’ autrui.
Abstract:Exploring audience responses to Samuel Beckett's Quad (1981) reveals the play's ... more Abstract:Exploring audience responses to Samuel Beckett's Quad (1981) reveals the play's tendency to evoke intense but contradictory embodied affects for its spectator. Audience members recurrently testify to experiencing a heightened kinesthetic empathy that catalyzes their sense of identification with the onstage figures. However, they also repeatedly record a simultaneous impulse to recoil from the performers, a sense of revulsion or the refusal of immersive engagement with their moving bodies. A hybrid methodological framework of kinesthetic empathy and disability theory offers a means of better exploring both the generation and the consequence of Quad's conflicting embodied affects. This framework emphasizes Quad's foregrounding of its performers' embodiment, and permits a consequently clearer recognition of Quad's value as a performance that demands that its spectator confront the physical fact of others' bodily existence—while acknowledging the difficulty of such engagement.
Suzanne Beckett’s shocked response to the news of her husband’s Nobel Prize has gone down in hist... more Suzanne Beckett’s shocked response to the news of her husband’s Nobel Prize has gone down in history: it was, she declared, “a catastrophe.” This paper follows Suzanne’s lead and reads Beckett’s 1982 play Catastrophe as Beckett’s reaction to his receipt of the Nobel Prize. Catastrophe is not only Beckett’s meditation on his painful experience of media exposure and institutional manipulation; it is also his caustic response to the Swedish Academy labelling him an “idealistic” writer of “compassion” and “inner purification.”
We describe the design, synthesis, and biological evaluation of a series of novel HIV-1 protease ... more We describe the design, synthesis, and biological evaluation of a series of novel HIV-1 protease inhibitors with carboxamide derivatives as the P2 ligands. We have specifically designed aminothiochromane and aminotetrahydronaphthalene-based carboxamide ligands to promote hydrogen bonding and van der Waals interactions in the active site of HIV-1 protease. Inhibitors 4e and 4j have shown potent enzyme inhibitory and antiviral activity. High resolution X-ray crystal structures of 4d-and 4k-bound HIV-1 protease revealed molecular insights into the ligand-binding site interactions.
View related articles View Crossmark data students may very well be reading excerpts, or chapters... more View related articles View Crossmark data students may very well be reading excerpts, or chapters out of sequence. These concerns would have been significantly meliorated by a glossary that gathered all the terms and names introduced in the text. It would also have served as a valuable reference work in itself, complementing the breadth and depth of the essays included in the volume. It is almost inevitable that the 'grand sweep' approach adopted by Salz will find its detractors if for no other reason than that the work must necessarily focus more on breadth than depth. The value of this volume lies in its admirable efforts to strive for the latter through multiple perspectives even as it presents a panoramic view of theatre, writ large, in Japan. That it is largely successful must be credited to the stellar roster of contributors and the deft touch Salz displays in his editing. It is equally true that when reviewing a project of this nature, the reviewer will find some particular pet interest underrepresented or, heaven forefend, absent. I could say that I would have liked to see fewer pages devoted to classical theatre, which has already been extensively described elsewhere, and more given over to exploring the intercultural matters, or the critical controversies surrounding theatre scholarship, for example; but, in the end, that would do a disservice to the work that Salz has constructed. Indeed, I can readily imagine pairing the work under review with a few judiciously chosen anthologies of Japanese drama, say, and building an undergraduate class around them. The accessibility of information, the breadth of coverage, and the variations in style make this an ideal reference work for anyone seeking to comprehend the basics (and then some) of the Japanese dramatic tradition.
Abstract:The laughter of Samuel Beckett's characters is frequently strange and unsettling. Ch... more Abstract:The laughter of Samuel Beckett's characters is frequently strange and unsettling. Characters laugh unpredictably, and the reader or spectator does not feel prompted to join them; when we do laugh in response to the Beckettian text, we are often shocked by our own lack of propriety. I examine laughter theory and the laughter in Gothic texts to explore why Beckettian laughter so disconcerts us, and what the implications of this affective response are for our understanding of what constitutes the human, and of our own ostensibly human identities.
New Interpretations of Beckett in the Twenty-First Century
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this p... more The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
This chapter examines how Samuel Beckett’s Not I (1972) and Marguerite Duras’s L’Amante anglaise ... more This chapter examines how Samuel Beckett’s Not I (1972) and Marguerite Duras’s L’Amante anglaise (1968) meld elements of the popular postwar genre of testimony literature with the symptoms of fragmented trauma memory, in order to sceptically interrogate the possibility of any ‘successful’ intersubjective communication of pain. Both plays offer a radically reduced sense of how far one can bear witness to traumatic suffering. Resurgent anxieties about France’s role in the Second World War overtook the country’s cultural imagination during the late 1960s and early 1970s, and this chapter reads Beckett’s and Duras’s own distanced proximity to Holocaust suffering against the larger cultural backdrop of increasing Francophone scepticism as to the healing function of postwar testimony. It explores how both plays stage the impossibility of testifying comprehensively to traumatic suffering (whether inflicted or experienced) but also draw on the bodily proximity and specific sensory dimension...
Beckett's plays have attracted a striking range of disability performances, in part because o... more Beckett's plays have attracted a striking range of disability performances, in part because of their insistent attention on embodied existence and the impaired body. Here, I examine four recent disability performances of Beckett's plays, exploring how these productions prompt re-evaluation of the previously undetected indicators of disability in the scripts, including mobility impairment, automatic speech, stuttering, and memory deficiency. Drawing on a series of original interviews with the practitioners in question, I examine the intersection between textual aesthetics and disability ethics in these contemporary productions, emphasising how these performances illuminate crucial corporeal, social, and ontological concerns in Beckett's original scripts, in newly embodied terms.
The shoulder is one of the most mobile and unstable joints in the body. When the function of the ... more The shoulder is one of the most mobile and unstable joints in the body. When the function of the shoulder muscles is altered, and it is without the appropriate neuromotor control, the shoulder can become dysfunctional. It is unknown how previously injured individuals vary in movement patterns or whether their brains change compared to their healthy counterparts. The purpose of this study was to compare neuromotor control of the shoulder between individuals with and without a previous shoulder injury. To achieve this, we used an upper extremity task with motion capture to analyze kinematic performance of the shoulder complex and electroencephalography (EEG) to evaluate neural connectivity of the brain. We hypothesized that individuals with previous injury to the shoulder would have different kinematic patterns as well as a less direct or evasive way of achieving their goal-oriented trajectory. We also hypothesized that participants with previous shoulder injury to have more diffuse patterns of brain connectivity during performance of the task, as compared to healthy participants. Our kinematic results made it evident that healthy and post-injured individuals have different anterior/posterior trunk displacement and hand pathways toward their targets. Our neurological Operational Definitions: Central Nervous System (CNS): Controls most functions of the body and mind. It consists of two parts: the brain and the spinal cord. Compensation: The counterbalancing of any defect of structure or function. A mental process that may be either conscious, or more frequently, an unconscious mechanism by which a person attempts to make up for real or imagined physical or psychological deficiencies. Electroencephalography (EEG): An instrument that measures electrical potentials on the scalp and generates a record of the electrical activity of the brain.
Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers - Water Management, 2021
Phosphorus enrichment in waterbodies can increase the risk of eutrophication and be detrimental t... more Phosphorus enrichment in waterbodies can increase the risk of eutrophication and be detrimental to the health of dependent ecosystems. Phosphorus is a common reason for a waterbody failing to meet the Water Framework Directive ‘good’ status. The Watton Brook (Norfolk, UK) is required to meet good status by 2027; it currently has an overall ‘moderate’ status and a ‘poor’ status for phosphate (as of 2016 classification). Source apportionment modelling predicts treated effluent from water recycling centres is the primary phosphorus source to the Watton Brook, followed by significant agricultural contributions. Considering the agricultural sector input and the cost of upgrading sewage treatment, this study took a stakeholder- and ecosystem services-led approach to explore catchment-based solutions. The feasibility for an integrated catchment approach builds on detailed environmental conceptualisation, phosphorus source apportionment ground-truthing and a review of potential costs and be...
Epistemic injustice" is a fairly new concept in philosophy, which, loosely speaking, describes a ... more Epistemic injustice" is a fairly new concept in philosophy, which, loosely speaking, describes a kind of injustice that occurs at the intersection of structures of the social world and knowledge. While the concept was first put forward in the 1990's, the most significant publication on the topic is Miranda Fricker's book Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing, which was published in 2007. 1 Since then, there has been something of an explosion of literature on the topic of epistemic injustice. 2 However, the concept of epistemic injustice is one that is poorly understood. While Epistemic Injustice offers extensive analysis of some aspects of epistemic injustice, it does a poor job of explaining, overall, what epistemic injustice actually is, limiting most of that explanation to a small section in the introduction of the book. The way that epistemic injustice is presented in this section is highly ambiguous, with key terms being loosely defined (if at all), and the necessary and sufficient conditions of something being an epistemic injustice are left unclear. This remains unresolved in the literature beyond Fricker's account: while there has been some progression in how we think about epistemic injustice beyond what Fricker's work provides us with, there has been a general failure to adequately recognize and address the ambiguities of the Frickerian account of epistemic injustice. In this thesis, I aim to show that, despite superficial impressions to the contrary, the Frickerian account is fundamentally ambiguous and incomplete. Moreover, later attempts to address these issues by subsequent theorists have failed. This project, however, is not in vain. I conclude by proposing a new account of epistemic injustice that overcomes these problems with the Frickerian account, offering a way of understanding epistemic injustice that is both philosophically satisfying and practically useful. 1 Epistemic Injustice has been cited over 2600 times as of 2019 (according to Google Scholar). All other works on epistemic injustice have citation numbers in the hundreds or below (as of 2019, according to Google Scholar). 2 Including, but not limited to, over 300 papers in the "Epistemic Injustice" category on PhilPapers as of 2019; and the publication of The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice (2017).
Although the characters in Waiting for Godot exist in near-constant states of physical pain, Beck... more Although the characters in Waiting for Godot exist in near-constant states of physical pain, Beckett’s play repeatedly emphasises obstacles to any shared or empathetic experience of suffering, both onstage and across the auditorium space. Waiting for Godot does not offer any clear model of compassion as a means of relieving another being’s distress. Rather, by delineating its characters’ indifference to each other’s pain, and by foregrounding the spectator’s own impassivity and even recoil in the face of suffering, the play highlights just how narrow these bounds of human compassion seem to be. This chapter draws on contemporary pain studies to read the unsettling charge of Waiting for Godot’s interrogation of pain’s incomprehensibility, resisting previous determinedly optimistic, humanist-inflected reading of suffering as redemptive in Beckett’s play.
Exchanges: The Interdisciplinary Research Journal, 2016
In early modern England, state beheadings were carefully codified, reserved for the nobility and ... more In early modern England, state beheadings were carefully codified, reserved for the nobility and those convicted of treason. The highest and lowest in society were sentenced to beheading: those who headed the nation and those who threatened the head of the nation. Beheading was both a confirmation and an inscription of power: the publicly-staged state-mandated beheading inscribed the state’s power on the subject’s body, reducing the individual to a legible, mastered sign. The decapitated head was intended to be a stable, monosemantic inscription of state power.Shakespeare, however, often resisted the idea of the decapitated head as a permanent, definitive inscription of state authority. This article will examine decapitations in Shakespeare’s King Henry VI Parts 1, 2 and 3 (1591), exploring how these plays undermine the state’s attempt to inscribe a stable, single meaning on the decapitated head. The plays do this in two ways: firstly, by challenging the state’s monopoly on accordin...
Résumé Le présent article examine la façon dont Eleutheria, la première pièce entière que Beckett... more Résumé Le présent article examine la façon dont Eleutheria, la première pièce entière que Beckett a écrite, refuse un sentiment d’ humanisme simpliste de l’ après-guerre, grâce à sa manipulation de la relation entre scène et spectateurs supposés. Pour Beckett, le passage au théâtre a indiqué un nouvel engagement plus agressif avec le public français, et Eleutheria implique directement ses spectateurs imaginés, les rendant complices dans le spectacle de la souffrance qui se déroule sous leurs yeux. Cet article s’ oppose aux lectures humanistes d’ Eleutheria, et conteste à la fois le lieu commun critique qui la voit comme étant inhabituellement conventionnelle en termes dramaturgiques, en comparaison avec les autres pièces de Beckett. En effet, Beckett se tourne vers le théâtre comme moyen de souligner l’ aptitude humaine à se désengager de la souffrance d’ autrui.
Abstract:Exploring audience responses to Samuel Beckett's Quad (1981) reveals the play's ... more Abstract:Exploring audience responses to Samuel Beckett's Quad (1981) reveals the play's tendency to evoke intense but contradictory embodied affects for its spectator. Audience members recurrently testify to experiencing a heightened kinesthetic empathy that catalyzes their sense of identification with the onstage figures. However, they also repeatedly record a simultaneous impulse to recoil from the performers, a sense of revulsion or the refusal of immersive engagement with their moving bodies. A hybrid methodological framework of kinesthetic empathy and disability theory offers a means of better exploring both the generation and the consequence of Quad's conflicting embodied affects. This framework emphasizes Quad's foregrounding of its performers' embodiment, and permits a consequently clearer recognition of Quad's value as a performance that demands that its spectator confront the physical fact of others' bodily existence—while acknowledging the difficulty of such engagement.
Suzanne Beckett’s shocked response to the news of her husband’s Nobel Prize has gone down in hist... more Suzanne Beckett’s shocked response to the news of her husband’s Nobel Prize has gone down in history: it was, she declared, “a catastrophe.” This paper follows Suzanne’s lead and reads Beckett’s 1982 play Catastrophe as Beckett’s reaction to his receipt of the Nobel Prize. Catastrophe is not only Beckett’s meditation on his painful experience of media exposure and institutional manipulation; it is also his caustic response to the Swedish Academy labelling him an “idealistic” writer of “compassion” and “inner purification.”
We describe the design, synthesis, and biological evaluation of a series of novel HIV-1 protease ... more We describe the design, synthesis, and biological evaluation of a series of novel HIV-1 protease inhibitors with carboxamide derivatives as the P2 ligands. We have specifically designed aminothiochromane and aminotetrahydronaphthalene-based carboxamide ligands to promote hydrogen bonding and van der Waals interactions in the active site of HIV-1 protease. Inhibitors 4e and 4j have shown potent enzyme inhibitory and antiviral activity. High resolution X-ray crystal structures of 4d-and 4k-bound HIV-1 protease revealed molecular insights into the ligand-binding site interactions.
View related articles View Crossmark data students may very well be reading excerpts, or chapters... more View related articles View Crossmark data students may very well be reading excerpts, or chapters out of sequence. These concerns would have been significantly meliorated by a glossary that gathered all the terms and names introduced in the text. It would also have served as a valuable reference work in itself, complementing the breadth and depth of the essays included in the volume. It is almost inevitable that the 'grand sweep' approach adopted by Salz will find its detractors if for no other reason than that the work must necessarily focus more on breadth than depth. The value of this volume lies in its admirable efforts to strive for the latter through multiple perspectives even as it presents a panoramic view of theatre, writ large, in Japan. That it is largely successful must be credited to the stellar roster of contributors and the deft touch Salz displays in his editing. It is equally true that when reviewing a project of this nature, the reviewer will find some particular pet interest underrepresented or, heaven forefend, absent. I could say that I would have liked to see fewer pages devoted to classical theatre, which has already been extensively described elsewhere, and more given over to exploring the intercultural matters, or the critical controversies surrounding theatre scholarship, for example; but, in the end, that would do a disservice to the work that Salz has constructed. Indeed, I can readily imagine pairing the work under review with a few judiciously chosen anthologies of Japanese drama, say, and building an undergraduate class around them. The accessibility of information, the breadth of coverage, and the variations in style make this an ideal reference work for anyone seeking to comprehend the basics (and then some) of the Japanese dramatic tradition.
Abstract:The laughter of Samuel Beckett's characters is frequently strange and unsettling. Ch... more Abstract:The laughter of Samuel Beckett's characters is frequently strange and unsettling. Characters laugh unpredictably, and the reader or spectator does not feel prompted to join them; when we do laugh in response to the Beckettian text, we are often shocked by our own lack of propriety. I examine laughter theory and the laughter in Gothic texts to explore why Beckettian laughter so disconcerts us, and what the implications of this affective response are for our understanding of what constitutes the human, and of our own ostensibly human identities.
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